Generally speaking, the goal of the current education reform is to "get rid of three": get rid of utilitarianism; De-administration; Depoliticize.
1. Education should be utilitarian.
Some universities are utilitarian, and everything is tied to money. This is a fatal problem.
Educational utilitarianism is a kind of narrow utilitarianism, which only pursues immediate interests and ignores future interests, attaches importance to short-term goals and gives up long-term goals, and even sacrifices long-term goals in order to achieve short-term goals.
Educational utilitarianism is embodied in exam-oriented education in basic education. From the teaching plan, curriculum, teaching methods, to the evaluation of teachers, as well as the ranking of key and non-key schools and so on. Everything is linked to the enrollment rate of students, which has almost become the only criterion to measure education. As a result, students, teachers and parents are miserable, and the worst is the students.
In the stage of higher education, utilitarianism is manifested in many aspects. It is very common to take "employment first" as the development direction of students in student education, emphasizing the cultivation of applied disciplines and skills while ignoring the cultivation of basics and humanities. Some simply regard "practical" and "applied" as the talent training mode, and degrade undergraduate education to vocational education. Reflected in management, it is endless assessment of various categories. From the assessment of departments at all levels to the assessment of teachers, all assessment indicators are simplified into a set of figures. In order to make up these figures, there are "employed" and all kinds of cheating and plagiarism.
The harm of utilitarianism to China's education is obvious to all, and it has long been criticized. But in recent years, it has not changed, but has intensified. Please look at the children who are forced to commit suicide, and the teachers who are almost driven crazy or die young. Can we wait?
2. Education should be de-administrative.
Universities must have autonomy in running schools.
We should take teaching as the center, give play to the leading role of teachers and the main role of students, and change the administrative tendency of education.
Educational administration is educational bureaucratization, which is a unique phenomenon in China's planned economy period. Strangely, with the gradual decline of planned economy in China, administrative administration has become popular in the field of education, consolidated and expanded, and now it has to be abolished.
Educational administration is mainly manifested in two aspects: first, the education authorities of governments at all levels from the central to the local level have too much power, and schools often have to implement it as soon as a paper document is issued. The autonomy of the school is getting less and less. From enrollment, specialty setting to the opening of some courses, it must be controlled by the government administrative department, and even the renaming of an ordinary university must be approved by the Ministry of Education.
Second, the high degree of administration within universities makes administrative power override academic power. "The power of academic committee is vague" and "the power of teachers' congress is weakened" (proposal of Jiu San Society on changing the trend of higher education administration). Managers can give orders to teachers through various channels, and even ask teachers to show respect for their authority, but there is little room for teachers to question and object. "University administration" actually denies the dominant position of teachers and academics in universities, which makes the talents who really engage in educational work and academic innovation marginalized in universities. "The phenomenon that academic ideals and official power are upside down makes some professors envy administrative positions and even reach the point of infatuation (proposal). Therefore, if the administration of education is not removed, the dominant position of teachers cannot be established and academic freedom cannot be discussed. There is a question of the dominant position of education. Premier Wen explicitly proposed to change the administrative tendency of education, that is, to make the leading power and discourse power of education really in the hands of teachers and real educators rather than administrative bureaucrats.
3. Education should be depoliticized
The politicization of education is a very sensitive topic, which has profound social and historical roots in China. When talking about the leadership of the Party, the president of China South University of Science and Technology said, "This is an unavoidable problem within the current system. Of course, there will be large and small party Committee secretaries from school to school, and what role they will play in the governance of the school can only make people guess at random. " What President Zhu said here is still the problem of school management. What is involved here is the political tendency of educational content, not that politics is not needed, but that politics should not be lifted above everything else. To be precise, education should be "lightly politicized". Politics is only a part of "moral education". In any case, the politicization of education is not conducive to academic freedom.